The Heritage Anglican Network: Non-Juring Leaven in the Church of England and Oxford High Anglicanism

NON-JURING LEAVEN IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND OXFORD HIGH ANGLICANISM. The relation be tween the Non-Jurors of two centuries ago and the Oxford High-Churchmanship of to-day is a subject of much interest, and also of no little importance. Modern Oxford High-Anglicans sometimes seem to imagine that they fully account for the Tractarian Movement in all its developments, and at the same time entirely justify it, by asserting its direct lineal derivation from the Non-Jurors of 1688. Finding the Popery of James II., with all that it involved, too evil and pernicious to be endured, and therefore welcoming William III. as their deliverer from intolerable tyranny and destructive error, the Non-Jurors nevertheless refused to accept William as king, or as anything more than a sort of Regent for the time being, clothed with the royal executive power and jurisdiction. They took up this attitude on the ground that having subscribed the oaths of allegiance to James, they could not, for conscience sake, violate those oaths by accepting William as their sovereign de jure. The incongruous and untenable position which Non-Jurors thus chose to occupy is luminously shown by Lord Macaulay, where, in his History of England, he has dealt with this period. But if any should seek for a more impartial judgment than that of a Scotch Whig like Macaulay, he may refer to Dean Plumptre’s sympathetic biography of that most charming and Christian of Non-Jurors,Bishop Ken, which furnishes a mild but convincing view of the irreducible difficulties and contradictions in which that excellent and gifted prelate found himself entangled by the verbal quibbles and puzzles involved in this Non-Juring attitude. From the whole history it can hardly be doubted that he would have retreated from his false position on to the ground of sane logic and of common sense, if he had not found it beyond his power to extricate himself from his antecedents. He, therefore, silently accepted the disability he had imposed upon himself and declined controversy on this subject.

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